Monthly Archives: August 2013

Double-Blind Lager Test

Beer, , ,

So if you’re looking at my Twitter or Untappd feed and wondering if I’ve been replaced by aliens, or lost a bet, or something, I assure you there’s a more reasonable explanation.  No, instead we decided we should do a taste test of all the crap lager we could find at convenience stores.  For example, if I’m stuck at a party/restaurant/bar/whatever and they’ve only got Bud Light and Corona, which should I pick?  Probably neither, but if I really want a beer to go with those tacos, would it make any discernible difference which one I chose?  Inquiring minds want to know.

I know that brand perceptions and other biases play a big factor, so I knew that a regular tasting wouldn’t cut it.  So we decided to do a double-blind taste test so neither of us would know which beer was which when we were tasting them.

The Lineup

I started with a list of the top 20 best-selling beers (sorry, it’s a slideshow, but that’s the list I used).  Then I went to a couple of local convenience stores to see which ones I could actually find in single cans (I cheated a little and bought a 4-pack of PBR because of the hipster factor).  And for good measure, I included Cigar City’s Hotter Than Helles as a “control” beer that I have actually drunk on purpose, and found decent.  So I wound up with all of the top 6 beers, plus a smattering of other top 20 beers — I’ve added their sales ranking and brewery ownership:

  • Bud Light (#1, AB-InBev)
  • Coors Light (#2, MillerCoors)
  • Budweiser (#3, AB-InBev)
  • Miller Lite (#4, MillerCoors)
  • Natural Light (#5, AB-InBev)
  • Corona Extra (#6, AB-InBev/Constellation)
  • Heineken (#10, Heineken)
  • Miller High Life (#11, MillerCoors)
  • Natural Ice (#14, AB-InBev)
  • Pabst Blue Ribbon (#17, Pabst)
  • Cigar City Hotter Than Helles (unranked, Cigar City)

Price is not a big factor for me when I choose my beer.  But I found it interesting to see the price differentiation.  The beer cost about $28 total.  At the high end, a 6-pack of Hotter Than Helles cost $11 ($1.83/can), the singles cost $13.50 ($1.50/can most of them were $1.19/can, and a few were $2/can because they were 24 oz.), and a 4-pack of PBR cost $3.60 (90¢/can).  And the Hotter Than Helles cans were 12 oz., as opposed to the 16-24 oz. cans at the convenience stores.  The PBR would probably be closer to the other singles if it wasn’t in a multi-pack.

Methodology

I had two main goals for the tasting process: taste a lot of beers to get a broad sample, and avoid knowing which ones were which.  I also wanted Wind and I to be tasting the same beers at the same time, so we could discuss them as we went.  So we came up with this process:

  1. We rounded up all the taster and juice glasses in the house.  We had 11 beers, so we had to dig into the high cabinets to get 22 small glasses.
  2. Wind left the room while I gave each beer a number (the slips of paper in the photo above), poured two glasses, and wrote down the beer-to-number mapping.
  3. I left the room and Wind replaced the numbers with randomized letters, wrote down the number-to-letter mapping, and rearranged the beers in order by their letter.
  4. We tasted the beers and rated/ranked them.
  5. We then consulted our mappings to figure out which beer was which.

Findings

The first thing we noticed was the color, or rather lack thereof.  Looking at the table full of tasting glasses, the color differences were minimal, and mostly attributable to the glasses or lighting.  So we’re definitely talking about pale yellow fizzy stuff.

The second thing we noticed was that there were actually differences between the beers.  Some had a very pronounced lager twang, but others didn’t.  Some of them had a little aroma, but others had absolutely none.  Some had honey-like sweetness or even a touch of maltiness, while others had basically no taste at all.  Some were very highly-carbonated or astringent like wheat, while others were smooth and clean.

By the time we were half-way through, it was obvious we were not going to agree on ranking the beers.  In particular, I rather liked the beer that wound up being PBR and found Bud Light to be middling, but Wind hated both of them.

That said, we were in complete agreement that Heineken was clearly the worst (which is pretty amusing since back in the days when we didn’t particularly like beer, Heineken was the main beer we did drink).  We also agreed on most of the bottom tier, too: Natural Light, Miller Lite, and Coors Light.

We also mostly agreed on the top of our rankings: 4 of our top 5 were the same, though in different orders: Corona, Budweiser, Hotter Than Helles, and, surprisingly, Natural Ice.  It was somewhat reassuring that we both included Hotter Than Helles in our favorites, though it’s worth noting that neither of us could pick it out of the lineup, and neither of us ranked it higher than third place.  This definitely confirmed my suspicion that a blind tasting was needed here.

Cigar City Brewpub

Beer, Food, , ,

We finally made it down to the Cigar City Brewpub recently.  It opened in April, and we’ve been down to Tampa a few times since then, but it didn’t work out until last weekend.

I was a little worried, since I read some pretty mixed reviews online, including complaints about lackluster food and spotty service.  As it turned out, we all enjoyed it and had no complaints.  The food menu had a lot of variety and some nice Cuban influences (we had black bean cakes and a picadillo meat loaf sandwich with yuca fries).  Everything was very tasty.

The beer menu had a handful of standards from the main brewery, but was mostly the beers brewed at the brewpub, including some special variants and one cask option (that sold out just before we got there, natch).  Wind had a light, crisp beer/cider mix (kind of like a shandy/radler), and I had a rich, spicy golden ale and (my favorite) some Beer Myth Bock, which was a lot like a sweet stout.

The atmosphere was nice and relaxed.  The decor was very typical pub — mostly dark wood and fabric, but there was enough natural light coming in to keep it from being cavelike.  They did have a couple of TVs playing sports, but luckily without sound.

We were also happy to see they had a cooler of bottles by the front door, well stocked with Cucumber Saison and Good Gourd.  I’d called all over town earlier in the week looking for Marshall Zhukov Stout and Good Gourd — and the few places that got any sold out in less than an hour, even with 1-bottle-per-customer limits.

Grasslands Brewing: Groundation Amber Rye

Beer, , ,

Yesterday was a good day — not only did we get a call from the insurance company saying they were going to send us money, but we also got another bottle of free beer from GrassLands Brewing‘s GrassHoppers Review Club.  The review club is the best way to help a brewery-in-planning:  We get free beer, Gabe gets good feedback, everybody wins!

This time around, the brew was Groundation Amber Rye.  I’ve been warming to rye beers recently, but I’ve mostly seen it in high-gravity IPAs, so I was excited to see what it brought to a more moderate beer.

The first thing I noticed was the color.  When I think of an amber beer, I think of a beer that’s at least translucent, tending towards a very clear honey color.  But this poured very dark, almost black with hint of reddish mahogany highlights.  The head was solid and tan, and dissipated slowly.  The aroma had a nice spiciness, some sweet maltiness, and just a tiny bit of sourness.

The taste was, as the tasting notes promised, a blend of complementing flavors.  As you’d expect from a very dark beer, there was some chocolate and smokiness, but not overdone like it often is.  Of course the rye gave a nice spicy note, and the hops provided a citrus counterpoint.

Clocking in at 6% ABV, this was lighter than many of the beers I drink.  But it’s solid enough to sip slowly and enjoy the flavors.  Overall, this was a very solid, enjoyable beer.  My only complaint, if you can call it a complaint, is that it differs from my expectations of an amber.  If you asked me what category of beer it was, I would have said porter without hesitation.  Wind disagreed and thought it was fine to call it an amber, though, so maybe I just have an overly narrow definition.

Another Year, Another Batch of Mead

Beer, Mead, , , ,

We’re back home after spending July up north.  And since we’ve got a few pounds of honey from Uncle John, why not make some mead?

Once it had enough time to mature, last year’s batch came out quite nicely.  Hardly even a faint hint of gym sock lingering.  So, this year we decided to change practically everything.  We did like the apple juice base, though, so it’s technically “cyser”.  And the results from last year gave us a pretty good idea of how much honey we wanted to use, but went with new juice (plain-jane Mott’s on sale) and yeast (Lalvin 71B).  We also varied the honey: one batch of Tupelo (which we’re calling Southern Cyser), one batch of molasses-like Everglades (Swamp Cyser), one batch with dark wildflower honey John gave us this year (Wild John Cyser), and one batch with a lighter honey John gave us last year (Old John Cyser).  We had a bigger jar of honey from last year, so we used more, pumping the gravity up to 25 Brix, so we hope it’ll finish dry and get to 12% ABV or so.

The Lalvin yeast is known for getting a quick start, and sure enough it was bubbling along first thing this morning less than 12 hours after pitching.  So with any luck, it won’t take too long to get there.